


How Ray Became Anxiety

by AceOfTheFandoms



Series: Rachel!! [12]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety!Ray AU, Hurt Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, OP doesn't know how to explain it other then that, Pre-Episode: Accepting Anxiety, Rachel becomes Anxiety, Roman and Patton are kind of jerks and not in the right but not really unsympathetic, Understanding Logan, Virgil ducks out, it's like their pre AA attitude towards Virgil, no beta we die like men, rachel sanders - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27794341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceOfTheFandoms/pseuds/AceOfTheFandoms
Summary: Rachel wasn't always anxiety
Series: Rachel!! [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882483
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	How Ray Became Anxiety

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note, this work is based off an au of mine. Roman and Patton are NOT meant to be unsympathetic. Just really not understanding and both kind of jerks to Virgil and also to Ray and the other darks later. Pretty much they don't get what they did wrong, not even realizing how bad they messed up, but they're not intentionally trying to hurt anyone

For Rachel, that day would forever be a reminder of how she messed up. It was her job to protect, and yet she couldn’t protect the one person who had always been there for her.

They had just finished filming the episode ‘Am I Original?’ and even before they headed back to the mindscape Rachel could tell something was off with Virgil. 

At the time she thought it had been a mix of Virgil’s recent fight and separation from Janus and Remus, along with having to deal with the lights treatment of him.

She wouldn’t know until later that night how wrong she was.

Fortunately, she did have a bad feeling so she went to go check on Virgil, after making sure the others weren’t around so they didn’t overhear. Not because she was ashamed of her brother or anything, it had actually been Virgil’s idea to keep their relationship a secret. Mainly because he was scared of what they would do if they found out they were related. Especially with how the others treated him.

Rachel had originally argued against it, knowing that they knew about the Creativity Twins and didn’t treat Roman badly, but a few very convincing arguments later, she finally agreed.

The second none of the others were around, Rachel headed to Virgil’s room and knocked on the door. “Anx you in there,” she called, just in case some of the others were still within earshot.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Virgil to open the door. He smiled slightly upon seeing Rachel and let her in. “Hey, Ray, what’s up?”

Rachel smiled slightly at her brother, but couldn’t help but notice he was fidgeting with his hands a bit as he talked. He normally didn’t do that around her unless he was really anxious. That wasn’t good at all. 

“You seemed nervous during filming, I wanted to check on you,” Rachel said softly.

“Well, I’m fine now.”

“The way you’re fidgeting says otherwise.”

That caused Virgil to freeze, he clearly hadn’t noticed Rachel noticed him fidgeting. “Okay maybe I was a little anxious but it wasn’t too bad.”

“Virgil….”

“I’m fine Ray it’s nothing,” Virgil said, trying to shrug Rachel off, “Just a little thrown off by everything. I’ll be back to normal in a little bit.”

Rachel just sighed. “Okay how about we do a movie night or something? Make you feel better?”

“Nah, it shouldn’t be that bad Ray,” Virgil said, “Go work on that thing you said you were making me.”

“You sure V? I can stay if you need me to,” Rachel couldn’t explain why, but something was telling her she needed to stay with Virgil, that she shouldn’t leave.

“I’m fine Ray, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“I know I just...have a bad feeling,” Rachel admitted, “I don’t know what it is but I feel like if I leave you alone something bad is going to happen.”

“Hey everything’s going to be fine Ray,” Virgil said, “How about you come back over after you finish the jacket? I promise I won’t go anywhere and that will help you calm some.”

Rachel nodded and smiled. “Yeah that should work. I guess I’ll see you later Vee.”

Virgil nodded. “See ya Ray.”

Rachel smiled as she headed out and back to her room. Not knowing that would be the last time she’d see Virgil alive.

As soon as she got to her room, she pulled out Virgil’s jacket that she had been working on and got to work. She didn’t have too much left to do, just a few finishing touches to make the jacket look better, and she wanted to finish as soon as possible as the bad feeling about Virgil wasn’t going away.

Unfortunately, once Ray started to work on something, she tended to get in a zone. This meant if anything happened outside her little bubble of focus and it wasn’t loud enough to break her out of it she didn’t realize what was going on. 

The only things that were able to break her out of that state were someone coming to check up on her, one of the others being in enough trouble that they summoned her, or Thomas summoning her.

This was usually used to help guide Thomas out of a situation he got himself into, but it also worked when she was working on something.

Which means she didn’t get up that night until she finished. And by that point, it was too late.

Rachel could tell something was wrong as soon as she looked up. The feeling had only gotten stronger. And her blood ran cold as she started to head over to Virgil’s room and found a purple flower crown and a letter waiting for her. 

Rachel put the flower crown to the side for now and decided to read the letter.

_ Ray, _

_ By the time you’re reading this, I’ll probably already be gone. I’m sorry I know I promised to be there for you but I guess your feeling earlier was right. I can’t do this anymore Ray. I thought I at least had Logan but well...you were there for today’s episode. Thomas will be better off without me anyway. He has you after all, and we practically do the same to help him. I’m sorry Ray, I’ll hope you’ll do better without me. _

_ -V _

Rachel wasn’t even sure when she had dropped the letter and starting to bolt to Virgil’s room. She had to stop him. 

As she ran she felt a sense of danger radiating from Virgil and tried to get there faster. He would have already locked his room so she couldn’t sink in and stop him. She had to make sure she got there in time.

But just as she arrived at the door, it started to fade. 

“No,” Rachel cried out, reaching for the doorknob, hoping by some miracle she’d be able to stop it from fading. She didn’t care if it was improbable. She had to try. Not even giving up as the doorknob faded from her hands.

It wasn’t until the door completely faded that Rachel collapsed in front of it. It wasn’t until she saw the tears drip onto the ground that she realized she was sobbing. 

He was gone. He had left her. 

Her body started to shake with sobs. She didn’t want to do this alone. She should have stayed with him, maybe then everything would be okay. 

She wasn’t sure how long she was there, just sobbing, not aware of her surroundings, but she did know that after a while she ran out of tears.

Just as she started to push herself off the ground she heard someone call out. “Rachel wait! You might not want to get up quite yet.”

Rachel turned in surprise and saw Logan standing there. She wasn’t sure how long he had been there and was about to ask him what he meant when the pain hit.

At the time Ray had been about halfway off the ground, but the pain made her fall back down as she gripped her head. It hurt so much. Why did she hurt so much?

She couldn’t really focus on what was going on but it sounded like Logan was trying to talk to her? She definitely felt hands on her shoulder, maybe trying to ground her? 

All she knew is the pain was bad enough that her vision was wavering. “I don’t,” she muttered before her vision started going black, quickly losing consciousness afterward. 

By the time Rachel regained consciousness, she was in Logan’s room. While she was still in slight pain, her head was still pounding slightly but nothing like the pain she had been feeling earlier. She looked around the room in confusion before noticing Logan working at his desk. “Logan,” she asked, noticing her voice was slightly sore as she spoke, “What happened?”

Upon hearing her speak, Logan looked up from what he was working on. “Oh you’re awake. That’s good, I wasn’t sure how long you would be out. As far as I know it’s only happened once before and-”

“Logan, my head hurts. Just get to the point.” Rachel may have been a little harsher with Logan than she needed to, but the words in the letter kept running through her mind. He had thought he had Logan before today’s episode.

Logan didn’t seem to notice as he started explaining. “So the human mind is strange. There are always sides that are needed and they’re the ones that appear in the mindscape. If a side ducks out, then said person is left without that side. However, that’s not the case if there are two similar sides in the mindscape.”

“What are you talking about,” Rachel asked, still confused.

“Basically, when a side ducks out and a similar side exists in the mindscape, that side gains the trait of the other side. Meaning what happened back there was that after Anxiety ducked out, you being the closest trait to him, ended up gaining the trait of Anxiety.”

“Wait no I couldn’t- I can’t just- that’s-,” Rachel said stumbling over her words, not sure what to say.

“It has happened before. You can ask Deceit if you want to know. As for proof it happened to you,” Logan said as he summoned a small hand mirror and handed it to Rachel, “All you have to do is look in a mirror.”

Rachel practically snatched the mirror from Logan as she looked in it. The first thing she noticed was her eyes. While the two different colors weren’t new, Rachel’s eyes had been green and brown before this had happened, what was new was her brown eye had turned a deep purple. The same shade of purple that Virgil’s eyes had been. Not to mention there was now eyeshadow under her eyes that she didn’t remember applying. Trying to smudge it off did nothing, not even leaving any on her fingers.

“When you take on the trait, you also tend to take on some of their traits,” Logan said, “At least that’s what happened with Deceit, he didn’t have the scales until after it happened.”

Rachel nodded in slight agreement before realizing something. “Logan, you want to explain to me why you were there earlier? V-Anxiety left me a note but Anxiety’s room in nowhere close to yours, there’s no way you should have known what was going on,” Rachel practically growled at Logan.

Logan paled slightly, Rachel could be scary when she angry and all Rachel could think of was that Logan was the only one mentioned by name in the letter and he just happened to be in the area.

Logan took a breath to calm himself before speaking. “I felt a disturbance in the mindscape and went to go check it out. I didn’t expect it to be him. I passed by his room on the way to check it out, I noticed that the door was gone and noticed you crying in front of it. From that, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what happened. I never meant for this to happen, I may not have gotten along with Anxiety,but I never meant to push him this far.”

Rachel paused at that, trying to figure out if Logan was lying. Enough time around Janus, and unless someone was really skilled at lying she was normally able to tell. And Logan...didn’t seem like he was lying.

“....You still shouldn’t have done it,” she finally responded. 

“I shouldn’t have,” Loga agreed, “And Roman and Patton shouldn’t have either.”

That made Rachel freeze a bit. She didn’t realize that any of the ‘light sides’ went against the others, nothing more than small fights at least. And yet here was Logan, saying that what they had been doing was wrong.

“I- Yeah...they shouldn’t have,” Rachel said getting up.

“Oh before you go, I should warn you, while the physical changes have already happened, there’s still going to be the other changes, mainly gaining Anxiety’s powers and anything else he had to deal with,” Logan said, “And...while Roman and Patton will probably be...iffy about all of this, I will be here if you need anything.” 

“...I’ll probably go to the others for a bit first, I still need time to process and….most of all I’m going to need time Logan, I’ll approach you when I’m ready.”

Logan nodded in understanding. “Completely understandable Rachel.”

Rachel waved slightly as she headed back to her room. She thought she was going to be okay, until she saw the letter and flower crown on the ground once she stepped inside and she could feel the tears welling up again.

She quickly glanced between the jacket she had just finished for him and the flower crown and made a decision before slipping both on. Anything to feel closer to Virgil. She started curling up in a ball as she sobbed her eyes out.

It wasn’t until after she calmed down again that she realized she had to tell Janus and Remus what had happened and somehow keep both of them from murdering the lights….or at least Logan since he had apologized. …..Crap.


End file.
